Fergie's Tech Blog

Supreme Court Appeal For Communications Decency Act

Thank you, Seth Finklestein, who wrote to the guys over at techdirt.com, and alerted us to this.

The Nitke v. Gonzales case, which challenges the conflict between obscenity, "community standards", and the Internet, is being appealed to the Supreme Court, in response to an unfavorable lower court ruling. 'The CDA contains provisions that ban speech and images from the Internet that any local community in the U.S. could deem obscene, even though that speech would be fully protected elsewhere.

The CDA also contains a provision that states that it's illegal to put any obscene material on the web in such a way that minors can access it. However since the Internet can be accessed by anyone with a computer, anything on the web can be accessed by a minor as previously held by the Supreme Court in Reno v. ACLU.'"

posted by Fergie @ 8/25/2005 12:09:00 PM